Innovest Strategic Value Advisors Launches Ecovalue '21 Platform
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Innovest Strategic Value Advisors Inc. has announced that it has launched EcoVALUE '21, a set of proprietary investment decision-support tools that assist financiers and investors to evaluate the financial implications of companies'environmentally-driven risk and opportunities.

Over a dozen independent, third-party back-tests have confirmed that superior environmental performance produces superior competitiveness, profitability, and shareholder value for companies. In diversified portfolios, the out-performance margin has ranged from 230 to 340 basis points. In portfolios concentrated in high-impact sectors, such as chemicals and petroleum, the margin is as great as 500 basis points.

To capitalize on these opportunities, Innovest, with input from strategic partners including Morgan Stanley Asset Management inc. and Coopers & Lybrand LLP, developed the EcoVALUE '21 platform. Innovest has conducted successful beta tests of EcoVALUE '21 with Chase Manhattan, Morgan Stanley, and UBS, among others. In one live trial, EcoVALUE '21 is currently out-performing the S&P 500 benchmark by over 275 basis points.

"It is increasingly recognized by prominent financial analysts that there is a strong, positive, and growing correlation between companies' eco-efficiency and their competitiveness and financial performance in the marketplace, whether measured as return on investment, return on equity, or total stock market return," said Dr. Matthew Kiernan, founder and executive managing director of Innovest Strategic Value Advisors Inc.

"EcoVALUE '21 is the first investment tool of its kind in North America that provides a robust and credible set of analytical models capable of assessing environmental risk systematically, translating it into financial terms, and identifying hidden value potential and investment opportunities in individual companies."

Added Judith Woodard, Managing Director at Bear, Stearns & Co. "EcoVALUE '21 is the first serious analytic tool which allows investors to combine financial out-performance with environmental excellence. It broadens the investment horizon dramatically, and brings powerful -- and financially relevant-new insights to the mainstream investment audience for the very first time."

EcoVALUE '21's ability to identify hidden investment opportunities rests on three factors:

• Superior eco-efficiency is a remarkably robust proxy for superior strategic management, and therefore for superior long-term earnings quality and shareholder value-creation
• Those performance differentials will have even greater financial implications in the future, as tougher international regulations, risk disclosure requirements, and global competitive pressures increase the financial dividends from superior eco-efficiency even further.
• The considerable variation in eco-efficiency among competitors in the same industry sectors is currently not transparent to or well understood by mainstream Wall Street analysts. As a result, this value potential has been almost entirely hidden.

EcoValue '21's extensive back-testing with over 350 Fortune 500 companies allows the varying financial consequences of the different environmental risk and profitability drivers to be weighted and modeled individually. EcoValue '21's databases have been synthesized from more than 20 authoritative sources, including specialized databases from the U.S. EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Bureau of Census. They also include detailed analyses of each company's capacity to manage environmental risks strategically and profitably.

Innovest offers four types of investment research products and services based on the proprietary EcoVALUE '21 models. They include:

• industry sector reports which provide in-depth analyses of high-risk industry sectors (i.e. petroleum, chemicals, forest products and power generation) and highlight environmentally-driven risks and opportunities for each sector;
• portfolio maximizer which provides comparative EcoVALUE '21 ratings on over 200 high-risk companies from the S&P 500 stock index;
• custom portfolio analysis which provides confidential, customized analysis of individual clients' equity and/or debt portfolios designed to highlight both investment risks and opportunities;
• and consulting services primarily for Fortune 500 companies and major institutional investors seeking to generate new shareholder value by translating superior environmental performance into financial outperformance.

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors is an internationally recognized investment advisory firm specializing in environmental finance and investment opportunities. Innovest's principals have worked on environmental/financial issues with senior executives from some of the leading industrial companies and institutional investors in the world. Founded in 1995, Innovest is headquartered in New York, with offices in London and Toronto.